Sociology Quotes

Nearly every inspirational story out there is about a person who breaks away from his or her background or community – where the best is clearly defined and is not them – and goes off and becomes the best somewhere else. - Of Effortless Effort

~ Amrita Sarkar

There is a huge difference between thinking we know something and actually knowing something.

~ Eraldo Banovac

Openness to change is key to implementing new knowledge. That is why one who is indifferent to change is not a friend of knowledge.

~ Eraldo Banovac

In general, sharing and using things decreases their value. However, knowledge increases by implementation and especially by sharing among people.

~ Eraldo Banovac

If you cannot solve a problem, ask someone who knows.

~ Eraldo Banovac

Those who have no knowledge are often willing to occupy influential positions with the aim of acquiring every possible benefit.

~ Eraldo Banovac

In reality, there is no highway to success. Therefore, be prepared for difficulties.

~ Eraldo Banovac

Success is mainly the result of hard work.

~ Eraldo Banovac

Wherever you work, work hard and educate yourself continuously. You must never forget social welfare, ethics and honesty. However, there is no guarantee for your career progression. Therefore, don't expect that only the best people will be promoted.

~ Eraldo Banovac

Argumentation is a human enterprise that is embedded in a larger social and psychological context. This context includes (1) the total psyches of the two persons engaged in dialogue, (2) the relationship between the two persons, (3) the immediate situation in which they find themselves and (4) the larger social, cultural and historical situation surrounding them.

~ Peter Kreeft

Our evolution depends on our memory. If we keep forgetting the mistakes of the past, only to keep repeating them, then we will never change. Humanity will never move forward, spiritually or morally, to become superior beings.

~ Suzy Kassem

The unstated premise that nature is nice lies behind many of the objections to the Darwinian theory of human sexuality. Carefree sex is natural and good, it is assumed, so if someone claims that men want it more than women do, it would imply that men are mentally healthy and women neurotic and repressed. That conclusion is unacceptable, so the claim that men want carefree sex more than women do cannot be correct. Similarly, sexual desire is good, so if men rape for sex (rather than to express anger towards women), rape would not be as evil. Rape is evil; therefore the claim that men rape for sex cannot be correct. More generally, what people instinctively like is good, so if people like beauty, beauty would be a sign of worth. Beauty is not a sign of worth, so the claim that people like beauty cannot be correct.These kinds of arguments combine bad biology (nature is nice), bad psychology (the mind is created by society), and bad ethics (what people like is good). Feminism would lose nothing by giving them up.

~ Steven Pinker

Many people think that the theory of the selfish gene says that “animals try to spread their genes.” That misstates the facts and it misstates the theory. Animals, including most people, know nothing about genetics and care even less. People love their children not because they want to spread their genes (consciously or unconsciously) but because they can’t help it. That love makes them try to keep their children warm, fed, and safe. What is selfish is not the real motives of the person but the metaphorical motives of the genes that built the person. Genes “try” to spread themselves by wiring animals’ brains so the animals love their kin and try to keep warm, fed, and safe.

~ Steven Pinker

Us versus them is not in our genes. It is something we learn.

~ Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

In my opinion, the author-level metric can distort a real author's citation impact. For example, an author who has an h-index = 2 obtained on the basis of two published papers of which each is cited twenty times is more influential than an author who has an h-index = 3 obtained on the basis of three published papers of which each is cited three times.

~ Eraldo Banovac

Global betterment is a mental process, not one that requires huge sums of money or a high level of authority. Change has to be psychological.

~ Suzy Kassem

A person who is too proud in love will suffer from the devastating bitterness in the end.

~ Eraldo Banovac

Being blinded in love and friendship is a common mistake.

~ Eraldo Banovac

The most dangerous people in the world are not the tiny minority instigating evil acts, but those who do the acts for them. For example, when the British invaded India, many Indians accepted to work for the British to kill off Indians who resisted their occupation. So in other words, many Indians were hired to kill other Indians on behalf of the enemy for a paycheck. Today, we have mercenaries in Africa, corporate armies from the western world, and unemployed men throughout the Middle East killing their own people - and people of other nations - for a paycheck. To act without a conscience, but for a paycheck, makes anyone a dangerous animal. The devil would be powerless if he couldn't entice people to do his work. So as long as money continues to seduce the hungry, the hopeless, the broken, the greedy, and the needy, there will always be war between brothers.

~ Suzy Kassem

It's supposed to be automatic, but actually you have to push this button.

~ John Brunner

And when there are enough outsiders together in one place, a mystic osmosis takes place and you're inside.

~ Stephen King

The decline of geography in academia is easy to understand: we live in an age of ever-increasing specialization, and geography is a generalist's discipline. Imagine the poor geographer trying to explain to someone at a campus cocktail party (or even to an unsympathetic adminitrator) exactly what it is he or she studies. Geography is Greek for 'writing about the earth.' We study the Earth.Right, like geologists.Well, yes, but we're interested in the whole world, not just the rocky bits. Geographers also study oceans, lakes, the water cycle...So, it's like oceanography or hydrology.And the atmosphere.Meteorology, climatology...It's broader than just physical geography. We're also interested in how humans relate to their planet.How is that different from ecology or environmental science?Well, it encompasses them. Aspects of them. But we also study the social and economic and cultural and geopolitical sides of--Sociology, economics, cultural studies, poli sci.Some geographers specialize in different world regions.Ah, right, we have Asian and African and Latin American studies programs here. But I didn't know they were part of the geography department.They're not.(Long pause.)So, uh, what is it that do study then?

~ Ken Jennings

At a conservative estimate, there are probably a million men and women in their twenties and thirties who would happily work long hours doing what most needs to be done, if they were paid something for it.

~ Philip Slater

That’s what happens when you crowd enough folks into the same sandbox: eventually they’re gonna start throwing a fit over who gets what part to play with.

~ Jacob D. Lochner

Of all the simplifications to which the human spirit naturally inclines, unable to reconcile itself to the complexity of the real, there is none more dangerous than the attempt to integrate the whole of society in one vast, permanent action group.

~ Bertrand De Jouvenel

A notable politician once said that it takes a village to raise a child. She forgot that it takes a family to raise a village. And the destruction of the family, largely due to policies and movements that she supports, has razed the village to the ground.

~ Eric Robert Morse

Very few politicians, who have chosen a political career, can fulfill the aspirations and survive the strains of an elevated office that in a monarchy was filled so randomly. Each tsar had to be simultaneously dictator and supreme general, high priest and Little Father. They required all the qualities listed by the sociologist Max Weber: the personal gift of grace, the virtue of legality, and the authority of the eternal yesterday.

~ Simon Sebag Montefiore

Older people sometimes talk about the good old days when life was better. In fact, they talk nostalgically about their own youth that was irretrievably gone. The past century has made enormous progress in all fields. The standard of living, work environment, health care quality and mobility, and the availability of cultural programs, recreational activities and information – all that clearly speaks in favor of nowadays.

~ Eraldo Banovac

Empathize with others. You may easily get into a situation where you need the understanding of others.

~ Eraldo Banovac

The essence of coexistence is quite simple: live and respect how others live.

~ Eraldo Banovac

Human nature is so complicated. Those who have little, want a lot. Those who have a lot, think others have more. Those who lose, blame others for the loss.

~ Eraldo Banovac

Do you want to resolve a conflict successfully? Don't wait, start a conversation.

~ Eraldo Banovac

A happy man doesn't reconsider life.

~ Eraldo Banovac

Sometimes people think the old days were better than today. Even though life was simpler and slower, it was not necessarily easier.

~ Eraldo Banovac

In real life, the truth is a rarity, while lies are common place.

~ Eraldo Banovac

It's my choice to be beautiful. It's my choice to be ugly. And it's my choice to decided what those words actually mean.

~ Virginia Petrucci

The man who has dedicated himself to the success of the protect, the master builder, no longer has any freedom: his conduct is now determined altogether by the constraining force of the end. Logically, therefore, he is bound to require at every moment from his companions whatever will best serve that end, and he demands of them imperiously whatever he thinks is of that nature. This imperiousness, though to immediate view that of the master, springs ultimately from the project itself, for it is the project which is in command. In the eyes of those under him, however, it is the master who hustles them, and they think him inhuman by reason of his disregard of their moods and personalities and his inability to see them other than as servants of the project (like himself).

~ Bertrand De Jouvenel

The law of all modern states takes account of associations, whose members, in theory, pursue the common end with equal zeal. The experience of all associations proves, however, that this is not the case, and that a lively, constant and vigorous awareness of the end is found only in a minority of the associates; an association is really rather like a comet—a large tail of docile followers dragged along by a small dynamic head.

~ Bertrand De Jouvenel

Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.

~ Toni Morrison

[The ruling class] sees people in the working class as being almost animals. It sees itself as being synonymous with civilization and its cultivation as coming from its natural abilities and not from its wealth and privileged opportunities. It doesn't see that the way in which it monopolizes these things distorts the culture it derives from them and that this makes its culture irrational and an enemy of civilization.

~ Edward Bond